How Big Should A Well Developed Muscular Body Be?

When it comes to "bodybuilding" in the pure sense (i.e. building your body) there needs to be a method in place by which you can measure your progress and know when you have arrived at your ideal muscular destination.

Rather then aimlessly lifting and pumping iron day after day with no real goal in sight, there has to be something by which you can judge your progress by and know when you have made it. Otherwise how will you ever know when you can ring the bell and have the satisfaction of announcing to the world that you have gone from being small, skinny and scrawny to big, buff and brawny.

Now with that being said, I don't believe that there should ever be an end to working out. It is something you need to do as part of your lifestyle. If for nothing else then just the health benefits that regular exercise provides. But it would be nice to have a goal to shoot for

I've been doing some reading about various ways to judge your muscle building progress. And while there is no cut and dried answer to the question "How Big Should You Be?" there are some good guidelines that you can follow.

The simple system that I'm about to share with you here can be used as the yardstick by which you measure your bodybuilding progress.

Bodyweight

Let's start off with the easiest method by which to monitor your muscle building progress - bodyweight. The first thing to keep in mind here is that "normal" bodyweights that these body mass index charts use (such as the ones that life insurance companies and doctors tend to use) are not relevant to a well-developed muscular body.

Also a given bodyweight is no guarantee of a particular level of muscle size or strength. So treat your bodyweight as a guideline, not an absolute rule.

Start with a baseline bodyweight of 100 lbs. for a person who is 5 foot tall. And then add 10 lbs. for every inch in height. So a man who is 5'10 tall should weigh approx. 200 lbs. that would be considered an average build. Then for a muscular build add 30-40 lbs. to that weight. So a well built muscular man who is 5'10 tall should weigh around 230+ lbs.

Remember again that this is just a guideline, some people will be able to carry more or less size depending on their particular body type and structure. Someone with a smaller frame and smaller bone structure would look bigger at a certain bodyweight then someone else who has a large frame and heavier bone structure. This is evident in bodybuilding competitions where sometimes a lighter weight class competitor may actually look bigger then some of the heavier weight class competitors.

But again just calculate your baseline bodyweight from this simple formula and you'll get a good idea of how much size you'll need to gain to have a "muscular build".

Tomorrow I'll cover another method of monitoring your bodybuilding gains by showing you a formula for calculating out your body size and proportions.